Rambling away on links
A good new interview with Marianne Faithfull apropos an art exhibition at Tate Liverpool she's curating, together with her first husband, John Dunbar. (Some paintings from the exhibition.) I've been recently rereading some biographies in which Marianne, Dunbar and the Swinging London art scene show up a lot (Groovy Bob by Harriet Vyner about art
( Read more... )
Mind you, George Martin is speaking strictly in musical terms here. And to me the big contribution Ringo brought to the group wasn't the drumming per se (though that's important) but the personality - the fact he could get along with all of them even when they couldn't with each other, his acting talent (Ringo made both A Hard Day's Night and Help!) and what Paul once called "his Buster Keaton charm". They definitely wouldn't have been the Fab Four with Pete Best. And while George's skills as a lead guitarist are without question, I don't think his early songs were his big contribution to the group, either; again, it was George as a person (not for nothing did the John-Paul-George core remain the same through all the early incarnations of the Quarrymen/Moondogs/Silver Beatles/Beatles while everyone else came and went), not least for the counterweight to both John and Paul he provided for the respective other.
All You Need Is Ears sometimes gets awfully technical about producing, and you probably are familiar with most of the anecdotes from other GM interviews by now (the only ones new to me were two or three very charming stories about Brian Epstein), but it's still worth reading. BTW GM by no means lets get Paul away without criticism. Directly after telling the LSD tale (as an example of a positive Paul trait, as which he sees escorting John out and tripping with him) he comes up with an example with a negative one, to with, Paul using Mike Leander to produce She's Leaving Home. ("One of the biggest hurts of my life" and "You could have waited, Paul, I thought. You could have waited." Gulp.)
Reply
Leave a comment